Obama's Bipartisan Problem

As usual, the conventional wisdom coming out of Washington about the passage of the stimulus bill is conventionally flawed. A bipartisan failure? Sure seems like both parties got just what they wanted--the Democratic majority quickly muscled a bill through Congress; the Republican minority quickly regained a fair share of relevance and leverage in their opposition and President Obama quickly signed into law on Tuesday the kind of big bold plan he demanded (albeit with only three GOP votes).

In fact, the only party that lost out in these dysfunctional negotiations was the silent one--the American people. Especially those of us who had foolishly hoped, against experience, that both sides would heed Obama's inaugural admonition to put away childish things, rise to this consequential occasion and put the national interest first.

Mostly, we were cheated out of an irretrievable opportunity to break the vicious cycle of poisonous partisanship, which has paralyzed our government for so long, and begin a new era of adult leadership befitting the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes. The kind of leadership that the president and Congress will need to hold on to public trust and political legitimacy as this crisis deepens--and to effectively tackle the growing list of gargantuan challenges on the horizon.

Obama started out in this direction, as did the Republican leadership he genuinely tried to engage. But as time went on, it seemed that the president and his negotiating partners had bought into the Wizard of Oz approach to consensus-building: Click your loafers together three times at the bipartisan White House Super Bowl party, and there will be nothing the matter in Kansas anymore. Repeated displays of good will, they apparently believed, would be good enough to get to yes.

This was the true failure of bipartisanship--both sides failed to understand the serious behavior modifications and political sacrifices everyone would have to make to overcome old, hyper-partisan habits that have become deeply entrenched over the past two decades.

You can't keep following the same warped process and expect to get a different result. But that's just what Obama and the Hill leaders of both parties essentially did.

The president may have made the greatest effort to reach out, but he also made the greatest mistake: underestimating the lust for partisan payback and programmatic spending among House Democrats and ceding control of the debate to them. This was no time--and certainly no place--for deference. Obama was the one with the mandate, not his party. And certainly not House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who proved as indifferent to engaging with her skeptics inside and out of Congress as she was incapable of it.

Yes, some Republicans were primarily interested in scoring points. But many were raising what they believed were principled objections--questioning the efficacy of many favored liberal spending programs when it came to stimulating the economy and creating jobs. Yet Pelosi did not bother to answer those criticisms head-on and explain why, for example, many economists believe an immediate bump in aid to state governments could be one of the speediest jolts we can provide to the economy. Instead, she and her lieutenants seemed to treat the minority with the same high-handed contempt they felt President Bush bestowed on them.

As result, we never really got the honest and open debate the president sought, just a slightly more civil set of parallel partisan conversations that were disconnected from reality and doomed to disagreement. The president did his best to reengage the public and redefine the debate with his 11th hour prime-time press conference. But by then the pig was out of the poke. And the Republicans found they had no interest in sticking their necks out for a bill they had no stake in--one they would pay no obvious price for opposing.

That's not to excuse the Republicans' mass withdrawal, just to explain it. The fact is, they have been just about as irresponsible in their powerlessness as they were in ruling Congress, especially in the normally more reasonable Senate.

After the partisan food-fight in the House imperiled the president's plan, the Senate's Democratic leadership made a good faith play to address the Republicans' biggest objections and stave off a filibuster. But the conservative-dominated caucus went back to the old Washington calculus. And instead of cutting the best deal they could to help the country, they opted for the Bush special--disingenuousness masquerading as conviction.

Indeed, the same folks who facilitated the Bush administration's fiscal profligacy turned around and relentlessly attacked the Democrats for running up the national debt--which is precisely what most economists advise doing to counteract a deep recession. Even worse, when it came time to put our money where their mouths are, 36 Senate Republicans--including Mr. Generational Theft, John McCain--voted for an alternative stimulus bill consisting of nothing but $2.5 trillion in unpaid tax cuts for the next decade. It was a display of shamelessness that could make even Blago blush.

Some of my Democratic friends point to this cynical behavior as evidence of the Republicans' unchanging incorrigibility--and as justification for more party-line steamrolling to move the Obama agenda. Those who favor this "screw them" school of governance argue that Democrats got their critical mission accomplished: passing a speedy recovery bill without any Republican votes. And if that proved anything, it's that bipartisanship and the sacrifices necessary to sustain it are mostly a waste of time.

This mindset may have made sense in the divisive days of Lewinsky and Libby. But it is totally out of synch with today's sobering times. In particular, this view is totally oblivious to the value of and need for consensus in this new political context--and why President Obama put such a premium on changing the way Washington works.

Bipartisanship to him is not about tactics and symbolism, as many wrongly assume, but about trust and governance.

Obama knows as well as anyone that America is facing a profound crisis of confidence--not just in our economy, but even more so in our political and business leaders. And he knows that to get through this tenuous period whole, we can't afford to have half the Congress opposing him at every step and half the country questioning the legitimacy of every solution that moves on the Hill. Forget about gridlock--that's a recipe for meltdown.

That's why Obama continued to reach out to Republicans even when it appeared that almost all of them would vote against the stimulus bill. He knows that he can't close the trust deficit outside Washington if it persists and possibly worsens in it. And he knows that changing the hard-dying habits of hyper-partisanship, as he suggested at his prime-time press conference, will be a long-term proposition.

"I am the eternal optimist," he said as he closed the conference. "I think that, over time, people respond to civility--and rational argument. I think that's what the people of Elkhart and the people around America are looking for. And that's what I'm--that's the kind of leadership I'm going to try to provide."

The stimulus debate was a real-world test run of that refreshing attitude, and as we saw, it hardly led to reforming results.

I suspect that Obama's prime takeaway from this experience is that he can't trust congressional leaders to trust each other quite yet--and he certainly can't trust Nancy Pelosi to be a change agent or a public persuader. This may be a time for collective responsibility in general, as Obama said in his Inaugural address. But on this score, and at least for the foreseeable future, the president will have to carry the burden of bipartisanship himself.

Dan Gerstein, a political communications consultant and commentator based in New York, is the founder and president of Gotham Ghostwriters. He formerly served as communications director to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and was a senior adviser on his vice presidential and presidential campaigns. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.